


baby sweetheart darling love

by hiuythn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Endearments, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24043681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiuythn/pseuds/hiuythn
Summary: Keith gives Lance a nickname. Lance wrongly assumes that it’s an insult.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 123
Kudos: 1483





	baby sweetheart darling love

**Author's Note:**

> me: *shares a wip list and promises to get them done*  
> also me: what if I started and finished a whole new fic for no reason and gave my readers trust issues :3

“—so after that, we’ll have Pidge disable the—Lance, _ei-laa_ , bring up the prints, would you—”

Lance shoots to his feet and slams his hands on the conference table, projections sputtering out of existence. “Alright, that is _it!_ I’ve had enough!”

Keith stands there with his hands still extended in the air. He sighs. “I was in the middle of something, _ei-laa.”_

Lance jabs a finger at him viciously. “That! That, right there—stop that!”

He frowns. “What?”

Lance gesticulates wildly, as if Keith should already know what he means. Keith looks at his friends. Allura, Coran and Pidge shrug. Hunk has straight up started filming, probably sensing a Scene™. And—Keith narrows his eyes at Shiro and his mom, who are looking anywhere but at him.

He turns back to Lance. “I don’t get it.”

“The—the _name_ ,” Lance splutters, “stop it!”

He blinks. What name? Lance’s? His?

“I mean, I really thought we’d gotten over this,” Lance continues. “Like I know we had our differences, and I did call you Mullet for the longest time, but after a while it was out of, like—camaraderie, you know? Like, you gotta know that. Do you not know that? Oh my god, are you calling me names because you think I still hate you or something?”

“I don’t think you hate me,” Keith says.

Lance doesn’t seem to hear him. “Because if you’re doing this out of malice, I’m seriously going to shoot myself out of embarrassment, ‘cause I thought we were like—friends? Please don’t tell me I’ve been misreading our relationship for the past four years and you actually still hate me, dude, that would be so—I’ve, like, died for you, man. There’s a blast scar on my chest for you, Keith.”

Keith nods patiently. “I know that. I have one on my abdomen for you. We’re friends, Lance.”

Lance gestures at him in enthusiastic agreement. “Right! Right. So—so, then what’s the deal with this ay-lah shit?”

“ _Ei-laa,”_ Keith corrects. “What about it? Actually, how do you know that word?”

Lance opens his mouth, closes it. Crosses his arms, thinks better of it and places his hands on his hips instead, shifting on his feet. He raises a finger in the air. Points it at Keith. “Are you serious. You. You keep calling me that—that’s how I know.”

Keith’s eyebrows fly up. “What? No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do!”

“When?”

“Just now!” Lance throws his hands up. “Do you seriously not know?”

That can’t be right. That—Keith turns to the peanut gallery. “Really?”

“Really,” Shiro says gleefully.

“Like every five minutes,” Hunk adds.

“What does it mean anyway?” Pidge asks. “It’s got to be bad if Lance is so worked up about it.”

Keith purses his lips, a flush working up his neck. He shoots Mom a look. She just leans back in her chair and smiles.

“That’s the thing! I don’t know what it means,” Lance grouses. “He could be calling me a dumbass for all I know.”

“To be fair, he calls you a dumbass in English plenty.”

“It doesn’t mean ‘dumbass,’” Shiro says helpfully. Keith glares at him. Since when did he know North-Eistr Galran?

“Oh, so it’s worse,” Lance despairs.

It’s not. It’s really not. Keith takes a seat and puts his head in his hands. Shit, he hadn’t known he was _saying it out loud._ It was supposed to stay in his head!

“What I don’t understand—” Allura taps a finger to her chin— “is why the translator isn’t doing its job with that word.”

“That’s probably because it’s rarely used,” Mom hums. “I would describe it as taboo, almost. My people wouldn’t let a translator decipher it out of exclusivity.”

Lance pales. _“Taboo?_ Keith, are you calling me a _slur?!”_

“It’s not a slur!” Keith exclaims. Mom muffles a laugh behind her hand. “Jesus, it’s just—it’s—look, I’ll—we can have this conversation later. Let’s get back on topic, yeah?”

“No, no,” Coran interjects. “This is really intriguing, linguistically. What do you mean by taboo?”

“Coran, no, c’mon—”

Mom steamrolls right over him. “Taboo in the sense that it’s—a very emotionally-charged word. You don’t say it unless you mean it. It’s not to be taken lightly. If said too early, or in the wrong scenario, it can be embarrassing, or even offensive to the recipient. And outsiders are definitely not allowed to use it without good reason.”

“So how does Shiro know it?” Allura asks. “I can’t imagine that you picked it up during your stint in fighting ring.”

“Nope. Krolia explained it to me,” Shiro says. “Because I got so sick of Keith saying it, and I wanted to know.”

Keith sends his mom a betrayed look. “Seriously?”

“He’s practically family, sweetheart.” Mom crosses her legs and interlaces her hands over her lap. She looks like a cat that caught the mouse. Keith’s own _mother_ should _not_ look that happy about his fuck up, what the hell. “You know, when I decided to teach you our language in the abyss, I wasn’t expecting you to use it this soon. It’s almost scandalous.”

_“Mom.”_

Lance holds his hands out, eyes wild. “Okay, this is freaking me out. Someone needs to tell me what the _fuck_ Keith has been calling me, right now.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Keith tries.

“It’s kind of a big deal,” Mom refutes sweetly. “I only called your father that once. You’ve been calling Lance that for three weeks already. Every day. Multiple times. And I know it’s not because you misunderstood it; I taught you better than that.”

“Which means that you’re using it because you really do mean it,” Shiro picks off from there. What the—are they doing a bad cop good cop routine here? What the fuck.

“Oh my god,” Hunk breathes, realization sparking in his eyes. “Oh my god, no _way_.”

Lance’s head whips around. “What? What is it?”

Coran looks at Allura, who is regarding Keith with a surprised expression. “That sounds a lot like that one word in High-Alter Altean, doesn’t it?”

“Wh—you guys have something like this, too?”

“We do. It’s not an uncommon linguistic phenomenon,” Allura says slowly, “in fact, most languages on Altea had levels of intensity for…this kind of thing.”

Shiro nods. “It’s the same for Earth languages. Russian and German, for example.”

Lance slams his hands on the table again. “Is _anyone_ going to tell me what the fuck it means?!”

Keith gives up. He drops his head back against the chair. It’s useless. This meeting was supposed to be about a major infiltration mission three days from now. Why are they doing this to him. Why the hell did they appoint him leader if they were never going to listen to him anyway.

“Japanese also has a word that holds the same kind of weight,” Shiro says, an evil grin stretched across his face. “It’s _koi_ _shiteru.”_

Pidge perks up. “Oh! I know that one! It’s ‘I love you,’ isn’t it? A really serious one."

Lance frowns. “Wh—that can’t be right a literal translation. He’s not using it like a phrase.”

“That’s because it isn’t,” Mom says slyly. “It’s a noun. But they carry the same sentiment.”

“Same—?”

Shiro leans forward. “Let me put it this way. Spanish was your first language, right? _Te quiero_ versus _t_ _e amo_ —what's the difference?”

Lance’s face screws up. “Uh, the second one's intimate. Like, _really_ intimate. You don’t really say that casually like you do with _te_ _quiero_ _._ Why?”

And this is where Mom goes in for the kill, because she’s ruthless like that. “Because _ei-laa_ is _koishiteru_ , is _te amo_ , in the form of an endearment.”

Bewilderment falls over Lance’s face. “An…endearment?”

She pauses, slides her gaze over to Keith, who’s watching this in resignation. She softens. _Is this okay?_ she’s asking.

Keith blows out a breath. Well, it’s about time anyway, he guesses. He should do this part himself, at the very least. He sits up and faces Lance.

“When you call someone that,” he begins, “it means that they’re precious to you.”

Lance stares at him. His cheeks slowly pinken. “I—what?”

Keith refuses to look away. Face aflame, he says, “It means that you hold them above all else. It means you’d die for them, fight death to come back to them, and then follow them into reincarnation. It means they occupy your senses so thoroughly that you could lose all memory and still identify them by their soul. It means ‘love,’ but also ‘life,’ and ‘beginning, end, and everything in between.’”

Shit, this is hard. But Lance deserves this. After everything they’ve been through together, Lance deserves to hear it.

“It means weakness. It means Achilles’ heel. It means, ‘nothing matters, if you’re not there.’ It means, ‘don’t make me live without you.’”

 _“That_ ,” Keith says, “is what _ei-laa_ means.”

The silence that follows his words is so thick that even Zarkon’s strongest plasma cannons could not make a dent in it. The team is gaping at Keith, wearing various expressions of shock, amazement and delight. Mom smiles at him, proud.

But Keith only has eyes for one person.

Lance stands frozen, two seats away, with his hands still on the table. Mouth parted and brows slack, he’s looking at Keith like…

Like he’s just had all his wishes come true.

Like he’s just been told he can have the one thing he’s always wanted.

“You…you better not be joking with me right now,” he says hoarsely.

“I’m not,” Keith rushes to assure. “Lance— _ei-laa—_ I’m really, really not.”

Lance makes a wounded noise. He falls into a squat and clings to the table, hiding his face against the backs of his hands. “You fucking—I can’t _believe_ you.”

Keith huffs a laugh, trying to bite down on the euphoria in his throat. He waves the team out—who, for once, listen to him and leave quietly, thank god—before dropping down beside Lance.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Lance hunches his shoulders. Exhales slowly, and drops them. He peeks at Keith, blushing so brightly, so beautifully.

“Figures you’d jump straight to something like this without even letting me know you liked me,” he mumbles. “Do you know how long I pined over you, you ass? Shit.”

God, he’s so cute. Keith is dying; he loves it. “Sorry. I thought I was keeping in my head. Didn’t know I was saying it out loud.”

Lance slugs him on the arm. “That’s so lame, dude.” He’s grinning, though.

“Yeah,” Keith agrees quietly. He brushes the hair from Lance’s face. “It is pretty lame, huh.”

His fingers trail down to Lance’s jaw, to the rasp of stubble there. Lance shivers. “Can’t believe you thought I was insulting you, though.”

“Shut up. It seemed more likely than…” Lance’s mouth goes wobbly. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up, dude.”

“I really hope you’ll call me something other than ‘dude’ if we’re going to be together,” Keith muses.

A strangled noise wrestles itself out Lance’s mouth. Keith musters up the leftovers of his courage to duck in and press a kiss to the corner of Lance’s mouth. Lance makes the noise again and pushes Keith onto his ass.

“You’re impossible. Why do I love you,” Lance croaks, and Keith’s heart swells fifteen thousand sizes larger. It’s almost too good to be true, that they’ve ended up here, whole, healthy and together.

“ _Ei-laa,”_ Keith breathes, thumb sweeping over Lance’s lower lip.

Lance’s expression crumples. He takes Keith’s face in his hands and pulls him in. The kiss is gentle, but frantic. Lance is shaking a little, and Keith holds onto his wrists a little too tight, but it’s so good, it’s so _much_.

It’s just right.

**Author's Note:**

> the reason this fic came to be was bc I got antsy that I hadn’t posted in a while so I went knocking on the brain like “hey I’d like to post a fic now, could we finish one of the wips?” and it went “NO! THEY’RE ALL DELAYED NINE MONTHS *spits*” and I went “okayyy...” and then I decided to watch leverage on amazon prime tv and then when I finished a couple episodes I went back to check like “hey any new updates?” and my brain was like “YEAH!!! WE MADE A NEW IDEA WHILE YOU WERE GONE, HERE—FETCH!!!” so I took the idea and went over to my laptop to open a word doc, which is an oxymoron because there were usually no words in any of my docs, and I asked “hey can I get some writing done please?” and the doc went “NO!!!!” and then I sat in front of my screen and cried until I blacked out and when I surfaced back to the living world, I had this fic. And then I posted it
> 
> So it was good day I guess
> 
> (hey do you guys think it’s a problem when you can recall john mulaney’s bit on delta airlines completely from memory? and then remix it? is that too much?) 
> 
> Also becca thanks for the serotonin. I hope your friends make fun of you for this too :)
> 
> right, anyway thanks for reading love y'all lots if you leave me a comment i'll die for you 💖💖💖
> 
> [my tumblr. pls interact with me. i'm goin insane at home](https://hiuythn.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hiuythn?lang=en)


End file.
